Drinking Straight from the Source

The doors to the world of the wild self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door. If you have an old old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

For the last couple of months I have been going through boxes as I get my house ready to sell, which is the reason my posts have been less frequent lately. Mostly it is a tedious job, often very sad, as there are regular reminders of my husband Stan, who died suddenly last fall. But every once in awhile there is a lovely surprise.

One of them you see in the photo above and was found in a box of camping and backpacking equipment. It is a folding cup. My father gave it to me many years ago when I was still in my twenties. He had it long before that, so I would guess it is sixty to seventy years old.

I used to carry it folded in my back pocket in the days when hikers had never heard of giardiasis. I would dip that cup into the cold clear water and drink deeply, oblivious to whatever organisms may have been lurking there. It seemed impossible in streams that flowed so happily down the mountain slope.

It is hard to believe now many years later, but in my early years of hiking I would sometimes go without carrying a water bottle. Most of my hiking was done in the Olympics or western Cascades where abundant winter snowfall each year created a near endless supply of tumbling streams. I would simply wait for the next one to appear then dip my cup into the cold water and savor that gift from winter snows while I sat on the stream bank.

I decided that was not such a good idea after a long dry hike to ascend to a base camp on Glacier Peak on a hot day in late August. I have never been so thirsty in my life. From that time on I drank from a plastic water bottle which fit perfectly in a convenient pocket on my pack, but I continued to carry the cup in my pocket. I am nostalgic about such things, especially about my hiking equipment, and the cup was a comforting presence on the trail.

Somehow over the years it got packed away and lost in a box, moved from one house to another, and disappeared from my hiking life and from my memory. Thus I was surprised and delighted to find it. I sometimes wonder why it is I am so nostalgic about old equipment. Or course they remind me of mountains days and trails, but there is more to it than that. A foldable cup reminds me of a time when there was no giardia in the streams. Cold and clear also meant clean. It reminds me of a time when a book was a collection of pages enclosed between two covers, each page producing a comforting sound as it was turned. It reminds me of a time when there was no cell phone in my pocket, just that old cup. My back was young and strong. I still believed I could change the world. The Vietnam War had ended, and I was actively involved in wilderness preservation and other environmental causes. There they are. All of these memories are in that cup. And they all fit into my back pocket.